A Voice Apart

Recently, we began hearing more and more about individuals' various voice issues and vocal problems... Some people have been suffering for years with the loss of their regular voice, speaking and/or singing .  The majority of those people, in the past, had already visited all kinds of doctors and ENT specialists and thus, had gotten diagnosed with all kinds of health problems related or, most of the time, not related to their vocal performance . Moreover, the loss of their original speaking and/or singing voice  often had been associated with all kinds of factors pertaining to the person’s internal health...?   However, some of the internal health problems, in fact, may be related to the change in the quality of one's voice.    For example: If the person maintains  some unhealthy diet i.e. consumes a lot of dairy or spicy products for that matter, that person most likely will possess a lot of mucus everywhere in the body, nevertheless, vocal ...

We all know that whichever health problems we have, the best way to conquer them is, first of all, to prevent it. However, if it already happened, the second best way to deal with it is non-surgically , if possible. The third apparent way is to embark on a surgical procedure. However, the latter is much more dangerous than the other two options. Look at the case of Julie Andrews; after undergoing a botched vocal surgery in 1997, she lost her ability to sing forever and never regained her real singing voice ever since.  Joan Rivers , not too long ago, went to a prestigious New York hospital to the outpatient ward to remove a simple polyp and, as a result, she never came out of the operation room.  And lastly, there is Sam Smith , who luckily came out of the O.R, but with no ability to speak for quite a few weeks. The rest remains to be seen. I wish him all the best and a full recovery of his vocal injury . However, with the best scenario, what is going to ch...

Indeed, should you give up or rather do something which will (at least) improve the quality of your life? What are those untretable, nasty voice disorders ? It definitely is vocal paralysis (paresis) or both vocal cords, the severe forms of spasmodic dysphonia , the severe forms of muscle tension dysphonia , scar tissue on the vocal cords , damaged vocal box and it’s anatomy due to/or during the surgical procedure and many more others . Once, not too long ago, in my office/studio walked in a middle-aged, pretty handsome Asian man with his wife. It was very sad to try to speak with the man, as there was nothing else coming out of his mouth but mooing. I could not understand one word he was trying to say. Then his wife took over the “conversation”. She told us a story that her husband had a cancer of thyroid. Then the doctors first were trying to get rid of the cancer, they conducted a surgical procedure , which had paralyzed one of his vocal cords ( vocal p...

Firstly, the answer for the question whether or not you can prevent a vocal surgery, in majority of cases would definitely be yes. We have seen and heard a lot of artists with great talents and beautiful songs , but the majority of those artists, unfortunately, did not have much of an idea about proper vocal technique, which actually would prevent those beautiful natural voices from, in some cases, severe damage. They’re usually picked up by the industry based on their talents, looks, and in some cases, well-written songs. Also, I will never forget, “until the day I die”, when I had an appointment with Sony Music Canada, and before starting the conversation about my own artist, the two Sony executives, almost, right away, when I sat down on the chair in their office, exclaimed: “Where have you been when we needed you last night? We flew over an artist from Vancouver and could hardly pull out any vocals out of him! It was more like we were pulling out our own ...